Tachyon

A tachyon is any hypothetical particle that can travel faster than the speed of light. The concept is an invention of O. M. P. Bilaniuk, V. K. Deshpande, and E. C. G. Sudarshan in 1962.

Most scientists think that tachyons do not exist. Einstein's theory of special relativity says nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of light, the theory is that these particles would be constantly traveling faster than the speed of light. If a tachyon did exist, it would have an imaginary number as its mass.

Many scientists believe that if one tachyon existed in the universe at any time, then the universe would be overrun by more and more tachyons. Tachyon is a device that will gain speed as it loses energy. So if a Tachyon starts moving at some speed after some time it will come at a point where it will catch the speed of light and then it will continually gain speed.

This is probably due to the fact that as they slow down, they increase energy. However, some scientists still believe that they could exist if they did not interact with normal matter.

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Since the speed of tachyons is considered as faster than the speed of light, by Einstein's Special Relativity the momentum of the tachyon particle turns out to be negative. And since the momentum of the particle turns out to be negetive, the real mass of a tachyon particle can not be determined.

Some astrophysicists still believe, that since the momentum of a tachyon particle is Infinite, according to Einstein's relativity it must lead to the negative contraction of the path where it moves. It is such a state, where the momentum of the particle and contraction of the path, both are negative, and since the particle travels at a speed greater than the speed of light , it may travel into various dimensions since every frame of reference is valid. This concept also relates to the concept of parallel universe.

Another theory says that, a constantly travelling tachyon particle can never be stopped, due to the fact, that it has infinite momentum, therefore an infinite amount of energy is required to deaccelerate the particle. Therefore these particles can neither be deaccelerated, and similarly, nor be accelerated .

The information about such particles have been found in HinduHoly books like the Ramayana and The Hindu Vedas. These particles have also been related to one of the three main gods in Hinduism, Shiva, who was never being created, and can never be destroyed, according to the Hindu mythology.

It was once thought that neutrinos in experiments at the ATLAS detector in CERN might have moved faster than the speed of light, which was a problem because neutrinos do have a positive, real number mass. This lead to further investigations into more unusual theories of, for example, how particles with normal mass may move faster than light speed, and some claimed that this result would disprove general relativity. However, it was later revealed that the abnormal results were almost certainly the consequence of instrument failure, leading a wide dismissal of tachyonic behaviour in this instance, although some have remained confident that the theories used to explain the faster-than-light case would still be found accurate. Claims that these observations would disprove general relativity, which was reported probably unhelpfully widely in the press, now also seem unlikely.